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The Dark Knight III: The Master Race #3-4 Review

Previously in The Dark Knight III, Batman had returned after years of absence but it turned out that Carrie Kelley was the Batman. Lara and Wonder Woman were disagreeing about where Lara should be. Ray Palmer ended up releasing the residence of the bottled city of Kandor, but it turns out that it was all a trap where a Kryptonian cult killed the residence and then shrank Palmer and is presumed dead. But it turned out that at the end of issue 2, Bruce Wayne was still alive.

The issue opens with Bruce walking into a room narrating about Carrie, and shows that he cares about her. We then continue more narration but also being cut in with clips with news articles of incidents happening over world with the possible invasion from the Kryptonians. Carrie asks if that these attacks mean that if he was no longer dead, and he replies that he doesn’t know since that he doesn’t know what kind of ‘horror’ this is yet. We then get a video of Quar preaching that the Earth is over their end of depression and he then breaks the back of what appears to be a reporter or just a random person and he falls from the sky. Quar then preaches about what happened to Krypton and says that his group was like a dandelion and he then gives one of his ‘children’ a seed that he ingests and the child then divebombs towards the Kremlin and he blows up into what appears to be nuclear explosion. Quar then preaches more about what his children can do and he wants the people of Earth to bow to them as New Gods. In the Batcave, Bruce says that they can’t do this alone and we continue to a two-page spread with panels of news talking about what the Kryptonians had did and how people are dealing with it. But we also get a portion of Bruce and Carrie walking through the snow heading towards the Fortress of Solitude.

Inside the Fortress, Bruce tells Carrie on why Superman is in this state saying that he gave up after the battle with Brainiac and the near destruction of the planet and Bruce whacks the Superman popsicle with a hammer. Bruce then tells Superman that he needs his help since that he is in barley and condition to fight and that the world needs his help. But there is still no reaction from the popsicle. Carrie then chimes in saying that they are wasting their time with him and says that his people are about to enslave the Earth and Carrie goes to leave where we then see crack wound effects and Superman is out of the ice asking about his people and Bruce goes on to show what they were doing.

The micro issue for this is about Green Lantern where we first see him in this weird alien design finding out that that Earth needs his help. We then see Quar wives talking around the Sphinx and Hal appears before them. The wives wonder why he is there and then realise that he is a Lantern and they start coming on to him and manage to trick him into using he ring hand and then one of them blasts off Hal’s hand and takes hand and runs off leaving Hal in the desert.

Back is some city, possibly Gotham, Quar’s children are talking about making the people worship them. Bruce and Carrie are heading back and Bruce notes what Carrie did with Superman making him break out of his popsicle but she isn’t taking credit for it. Some of Quar’s children then head into space and take out satellites. Lara sees Gotham starting in flames and Baal asks if she is not afraid, but she replies saying that she is more curious about Kandor and not afraid. Quar appears and says that his son wasn’t talking about Kandor but of her. Baal says that she is afraid of herself and that she shouldn’t hold herself to her own rules and Quar pretty much starts to brainwash her. We then get a page of Superman falling to his knees with tears in his laser firing eyes.

We then cut over to an emergency meeting with heads of different countries and there deciding whether to start a war with the Kryptoinans but they are undecided but Bruce has his army assembled in the Batcave where he says that he is too easy. Carrie questions it and Bruce replies saying phony bosses will react before they do but there is a new piece that they see that there could be a chance that the world could see a global surrender. Quar and his followers break into the UN meeting in the Pentagon where he wants to get his answer from the world but that gets interrupted by Batman appearing on a screen where he tells him to go to hell with all the screens repeating him saying hell. Quar questions him and Superman appears telling them that ‘you heard them’. Quar then rants a bit about that how he would spend ‘thousands of centuries in thousand hells than be trapped in the glass cage’. He then spits at him and says that he need to be punished. Superman then notices something behind him when a voice says that he is a traitor to his race where it is revealed to be Lara, ending the issue.

Issue four opens with Ray Palmer not dead and apparently at some sort of possible sub-atomic level. Back in Washington, he tells Lara that she is making a mistake and tells her that the world needs protecting but Quar asks her if she agrees with him. She does agree that the world is beautiful but that the ‘ants’ that run it are destroying it. 0ne of Quar followers or possibly Quar asks Superman why he would allow people to do this and he says that he refuses to put himself above humanity and then Lara blasts him through the Washington Memorial. Lara asks him to make a choice but he replies saying that he won’t hit her back, so she whacks him straight into the Lincoln Memorial. Lara keeps asking him to make his decision but Baal tells her that he has already made his decision.

In the Batcave Carrie is having enough of this and suggest that they go help him, but Bruce says that they can’t but suggests that there is one person that can help but they won’t and we find out that Lara beat up Superman for hours, ending it at the Fortress of Solitude where we see a blood trail leading to the door. Superman heads back to the Fortress and we see Quar’s cult following him there where he yells out to Earth that their champion has fallen and puts him on trial for treason. Superman tries to plead to Lara but she just stares at him and the cultists give their passing of the guilty verdict and Quar encases him in Black Matter and they blast the Fortress with their eye-beams. Quar then says that he is going to move onto Gotham and that if Batman doesn’t surrender in 36 hours he would kill them. In the Jungle, we back with Wonder Woman saying that they made her decision and that she doesn’t agree with then and that she doesn’t agree with Bruce and destroys the communicator that Bruce gave her.

In the micro-issue this revolves around Carrie now under the mantle of Batgirl and is basically covering the fallout about the civilians wanting to Batman to submit to the Kryptonians. But the cool thing that did come from this was Carrie throwing a device into the sea and it summons Aquaman on a large Hammerhead Shark and he tells her to get on.

Back on Gotham City Hall, a protest is breaking out with the citizens wanting Batman to surrender. In Commissioner Yindel’s office she monologues off about what has been happening, first that it has been over seven hours since that the power grid went down, she got a bottle of booze and that she realises that now the GCPD is useless and that it took Gotham City twelve hours to realise it. Back in the Batcave Carrie is injecting something into Bruce to help him get around and Bruce gives Carrie a mission. This happens in the micro-issue and he gives her a graduation present, which we also see in the micro-issue. We the see some of the news talking about what happening in Gotham and we also see Flash running in to help but he then gets his legs broken by somebody but he is then rescued by one of Batman’s army. On top of the GCPD, Yindel talks about the people being like ants and other things but Batman appears behind her and gives her the opportunity to do the right thing. The issue ends back with Ray Palmer saying that ‘maybe he can fix this’.

I think that these issues have been rather well done. Having Carrie be the one that helps snap Superman out of his disappointment slump was good and the whole brainwashing that has been done to Lara is rather interesting. But we are only halfway through the series and I think this is the point on where it starts to go a bit sideways.